Grand tour of Europe? Nope - grand tour of colleges

Friday

Apr 24, 2009 at 2:00 AM

Forget the Grand Tour of Europe. If your kid is in high school, your next family vacation — in fact, your next couple of family vacations — may well be the Grand Tour of Colleges. Instead of museums or cafes in London or Rome, you'll be seeing quads, dorms and dining halls from San Diego State to the University of Maine. Instead of converting dollars to euros, your brain will be grappling with GPAs, SATs, and oh yes, the largest number you've ever seen in your life, except for your mortgage — the price of tuition.

BETH J. HARPAZ

Forget the Grand Tour of Europe. If your kid is in high school, your next family vacation — in fact, your next couple of family vacations — may well be the Grand Tour of Colleges. Instead of museums or cafes in London or Rome, you'll be seeing quads, dorms and dining halls from San Diego State to the University of Maine. Instead of converting dollars to euros, your brain will be grappling with GPAs, SATs, and oh yes, the largest number you've ever seen in your life, except for your mortgage — the price of tuition.

Now, if you went to college way back in the 20th century, you may wonder how this process got so complicated, and why it involves so much effort by parents. When I was in high school, I applied to one college. I got in. I went there. The first time I saw the campus was the day I moved into my dorm, toting, naturally, a plastic milk crate filled with record albums. (I doubt I'd be admitted today; the sole evidence of my extracurricular activities was a recommendation from a neighbor. "To whom it may concern," she handwrote in script on a sheet of paper. "Beth is a very good baby sitter. Sincerely, Mrs. Beitchman.")

Fast-forward to today. My oldest is a high school junior, so our Easter vacation was spent on the New York State Thruway, driving to colleges in places like Syracuse and Albany. Not that the trip wasn't fun. Colleges do a good job of recruiting the perkiest, most articulate 19-year-olds on earth as tour guides, the kind of kids who somehow make it seem thrilling that you got a chance to walk past the salad bar in a dining hall, the hoodie display in the campus bookstore or the unmade beds in an undergrad suite.

But after a while, all the trivia takes on a sameness. When the guide asks you to guess what the largest class is, Psych 101 is always a good bet. If the college has teams, you'll hear all about the excitement on campus before every big game. If the location is hilly with snow, a popular form of recreation may be "traying" (that is, stealing — um, borrowing — a tray from the dining hall for use as a sled). And if the guides try to wow you by stating how many millions of library books they have access to, wow 'em back by asking, "When was the last time you borrowed a book from the library?"

How exactly these tours are supposed to show that a school is right for your kid, I'm not quite sure, since we've been on seven of them so far (with another five to go) and have yet to see anyone teach a class. (Some colleges will arrange for prospective students to sample a lecture, but daily tours with dozens of people are generally considered too disruptive to march in and out of lecture halls.)

And yet somehow, after two hours on campus, your child claims to know if he or she would like to spend four years there. To a parent, the reasons for the thumbs-up or down can seem a little arbitrary. Ellen Hirzy, a mom from Washington, D.C., said that when she was looking at colleges with her son, Pepsi and Windows were "the kiss of death. Coke and Mac campuses, perfect."

Her son crossed one school off his list after the other kids in his information session said they were interested in studying business. But driving around another place, he got all excited at the sight of a "high-rise dorm with a lot of bikes parked out front," Hirzy said. "He had just realized that he could take his bike to college, and that would be so cool."

Hirzy recalled that when her stepdaughter visited colleges, she "practically refused to get out of the car at the University of Missouri-Columbia because it was too big." She finally agreed to walk to the admissions office, but left without taking the tour. But the very same campus turned out to be the right choice for Hirzy's son, now a freshman there.

"When Will was little, he had a very recognizable 'happy walk' — kind of a zingy little bounce in his step," Hirzy said. After hearing the presentation at the University of Missouri's journalism school, "I watched him walk the happy walk, and I knew it was the place for him. He's an East-Coast city kid on a Midwestern campus in a great college town, and he loves it."